Help with wiring / circuit diagram

R

Rich-Bristol

New member
Hi,

I'm hoping some clever person out there can help me with a potential wiring / circuit diagram query.

What I'd like to build is a Strat type guitar - but with three P90's.

Instead of using a 5-way Strat type pickup selector, I'd like to use 2 three-way toggle switches (like a Yamaha SA-503).

The first toggle would select between the neck and bridge pickups (Gibson stylee) and these two pickups would have a single volume control and a single tone control - i.e. the ontrols are shared by the two pickups.

The middle pickup would be controlled by the 2nd toggle switch, and that would either be off; in phase; out of phase. The middle pickup would have it's own dedicated volume control but would share the tone control I already mentioned re. the other two pickups - so...3 controls in total with 2 toggle switches.

I haven't found a diagram that gives me anything like this - can anyone help?

Thanks in advance

Rich
 
Re: Help with wiring / circuit diagram

Welcome to the forum.

You have done a pretty good job of describing what you require. It should be pretty easy to trawl your way through the main SD website support pages to obtain the elements of your schematic.

For example, the CRL three-way selector switch diagram is Standard Telecaster wiring.

So, for that matter, are the Master Volume and Tone controls.

The tricky bit is the centre pickup "independent volume control, shared tone control" idea. This governs where the centre pickup signal joins the rest of the circuit. Usually, the blended-in centre pickup signal will still be governed by the Master Volume control. Is this what you require?
 
Re: Help with wiring / circuit diagram

the only tricky part is the phase

putting the tone control on the output is easy enough
 
Re: Help with wiring / circuit diagram

Without taking phase into account, it could look like this:

EDIT: diagram removed due to errors.
 
Last edited:
Re: Help with wiring / circuit diagram

You got that selector switch almost completely wrong. In your diagram, the neck PU would be on all of the time EXCEPT when the spurious ground connection shuts everything off completely.

I am at work now. I cannot edit the diagram until this evening. (GMT)
 
Re: Help with wiring / circuit diagram

Hmm, that's interesting stuff. The Yamaha SA-503 appears to have 3 P90's with the toggle enabling the middle one to be in / out of phase - I wonder how it does it? Does anyone have any info? I guess I would be willing to use a 4-conductor P90's [is that what's sometimes called P100's? Actually humbuckers of a sort?]

Any more info / diagrams that anyone could post would be truly appreciated. :0)
 
Re: Help with wiring / circuit diagram

OK, so forget about the simplified controls for the minute - let's just look at the Yamaha SA-503TVL, and how it manages to reverse the phase of the middle P90 (or DOES it?).

The evidence that says it can reverse the phase on the middle pickup is shown in the links below - especially the YouTube link.

Meanwhile the nice people at Yamaha have supplied me with a schematic / circuit diagram, here: from reading the diagram do you agree that the 2nd toggle can switch the middle pickup between in-phase and out-of-phase?

Here's the evidence of reversed phase:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32TpYROP9m4

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/guitars/yamaha-sa503-tvl-troy-van-leeuwen-signature-electric-guitar

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/electric_guitars/yamaha/sa503_tvl/index.html?no_takeover
 
Re: Help with wiring / circuit diagram

It does not. The second selector goes like this:
Middle out
Middle added
Middle only.

To invert the phase you'll need a DPDT to swap both ends of the pickup. To avoid unnecessary noise, you'll want to open up the middle pickup and convert it to 2-conductor plus shield. The two conductors will attach to either coil wire and the shield will attach to the baseplate.

You can have a blend knob, but as Funkfingers said it will most likely need to be subject to the master volume. I would find that to be expected behavior.

Have you actually tried middle out of phase? I have and it's quite pinched and not hugely useful. Having a blend knob may help, though.
 
Re: Help with wiring / circuit diagram

Many thanks for that ParameterMan. Your reading of the circuit is the same as mine.
No I haven't actually tried middle out-of phase, but I was intrigued by the Yamaha sa-503TVL, yet couldn't make sense of the wiring diagram.

Isn't it weird that various sources that you'd expect to be reliable, say otherwise. I hate misinformation like the 'evidence' I supplied...one person says something and then before you know it it's considered to be the truth...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top